It's starting to get colder here, so it's time to make soup! I made the sotanghon, chicken and mushroom soup from Pinoy Cook tonight and it was wonderful; really easy and really filling. (The wonderful-ness of it all was helped along by the Global santoku knife we bought yesterday...)
I was way too hungry after making it, so no photo this post... maybe I'll post one tomorrow if the leftovers look presentable.
One of my favourite things about cooking is that with practice, it gets easier and easier to smoosh multiple recipes together, substitute ingredients at will and still end up with something super tasty.
We picked up some frozen handmade wagyu beef ravioli from a local farmer's market on Saturday so I made a sauce based on this recipe. I had to substitute based on what was in the fridge - vine ripened tomatoes took the place of the roma tomatoes in the sauce, and baby roma tomatoes were used as garnish instead of cherry tomatoes - but the results were fantastic.
In kind of unrelated news...
I appear to be allergic to crustaceans. I am not very happy about this and have requested a challenge test to find out just how allergic I am. This means no prawns, crab or lobster until the test though, which could be anything up to three months away (sob).
And for Easter, I ended up making Gourmet Traveller's tiny chocolate fudge cakes. I have no photos because they ended up disappearing in all of five minutes!
I'd never bothered to segment an orange properly for a recipe before this one, but it made all the difference! I used this illustrated tutorial to figure out what to do, and owning a small sharp knife and half-decent knife skills took care of the rest.
The resulting pudding was not exactly what you'd call healthy, but damn it tasted and smelled good!
Next weekend is Easter so I'm trying to figure out what to make... I know it has to feed a bunch of people and it has to involve chocolate.
Risotto isn't hard to make, per se; you do need to measure your ingredients and stir it constantly for half an hour if you want it to turn out just right. Less intensive ways to do it are by baking (this recipe is NICE. Rich, but nice) and with a rice cooker (which I plan to try as soon as my boss gives back my awesome new cookbook).
This is probably the fifth or sixth time I've tried making risotto and this try was perfect! The creme fraiche works beautifully with this particular recipe, too.
Bluuuuugh. I went for the interview this morning...first of all, I am NEVER at my best at 8:30 in the morning. They wanted me to be there early, at 8:15, which means I had to leave my house by like 7:20.
I was really excited about this job, because it's a little bit of everything...designing, building, and a lot of working with a bunch of different people and different concepts. A lot of it is working with teenagers who've just been accepted to school, some of it is working with the college and some of it is working alumni. It's kind of a long shot, because I've only ever done it for school or dinky little sites, nothing like making the public face of college-wide institutions.
I was supposed to interview with two people for the first interview, but I had already interviewed with one of them a couple of weeks ago for this position. The position changed the day before we were scheduled to interview, but she decided to talk to me anyway in case I'd be interested in the new position. The first man I interviewed with is adorable. He'll be working with my current boss in a couple of weeks, and he stops by the office every now and then (my current boss is leaving to go work in the interviewer's office in a couple weeks.)
The second man I interviewed with was super nice as well. He's been a professional with Proctor and Gamble for a long time. I felt comfortable with him, but at the same time, I was uncomfortable because he seemed to be poking around for skills that I don't have yet...like, I don't have professional experience building websites, because, well, I haven't had a job doing that yet. That kind of thing. So at the end of the interview I asked him what he would suggest I practice in terms of interviewing, and he said, "I liked that you brought a lot of examples of what you've done and what you can do. What I think you can improve on...I know your school encourages you to do group projects, and say we a lot. But in interviews, employers are more interested in knowing what you did. Say I more, and show them what you did. More concrete examples of what you did."
So, perhaps that didn't go as well as I'd have liked it to, but at least I have feedback on how to make my interviews better for next time.
Also, it's not the prettiest (YET) but here's the link to the one that Katherine and I started working on over the summer. (I designed that logo up in the corner! Well, I did other pages too, but I'm working on that "I" thing.) http://sisa.cms.si.umich.edu/
So, it's been a long time. I don't remember how long, so here's a list of things that happened this summer, starting from about last weekend and going until about April.
My husband and I were incredulous that the recipes in Cooking Guide could taste good when made as is, so we've decided to try out recipes and review them with photos until we get sick of the whole exercise.
We tried the saltimbocca first, and while it doesn't look so crash hot it tasted great! Substituting ground sage for the fresh sage leaf and speck for the prosciutto didn't mess with the recipe much at all.
Our lack of a meat tenderiser combined with a lack of respect for the recipe's insistence on the meat tenderiser is where things fell down a bit - getting the speck and the veal to stick together needed a bit more of a beating. Didn't affect the taste though! ;)
I want to make a juice recommendation to everyone: Garden Patch Low Sodium juice from Trader Joe's. Amazing. 100% juice, full of good things for you like celery and spinach, and it tastes good because someone was smart enough to put a little bit of red pepper in it. (Not enough to hurt your stomach, Mom, I promise. Just enough for flavor.)
I can't wait to get a juicer (although I will probably be making do with a blender)...I hear from a certain source that I will soon be "swimming in vegetables" and to that I say, let us juice!
Hurray for weekends! Actually, just hurray for downtime in general. I'm still working, still trying to teach myself applicable skills for school and life, and I forgot if I told you guys, but I am now the Events Coordinator for our student organization that represents my whole school. So, although I still only work 15 hours a week (this will be changing soon, even if I have to volunteer) I am still keeping busy.
On Saturday and Sunday I went to a couple barbeques. Good times were had by all, especially me. :D On Saturday, I went to the park with Ariel, Brian, Chris, and some of A & B's friends from undergrad, Rika and Andrew.
I brought marshmallows to both barbeques, because toasting marshmallows is AWESOME. Ariel also brought ice cream, which had melted into soup and I forgot to get a picture of, and watermelon, woo!
We went out later to Cafe Habana, and on the way home, Ariel found some leaves...naturally, she and Tom needed hats!
On Sunday I went over to Katherine's house, and I barbequed chicken breasts. They came out pretty well, which was awesome because I had never barbequed any chicken other than legs (drums/thighs) before. We ate a lot of marshmallows and were thinking about a walk when I suggested finding swings. Everybody loves swings, right?
I had a lovely Monday evening. Aunt Annie and Uncle Marc came to Ann Arbor and we went to dinner. We drove around first and looked at some houses that Uncle Marc did the landscaping design for first. We brought Elise dinner, and I got to walk her cat! Then Uncle Marc and Aunt Annie drove me home through some really pretty neighborhoods.
On Monday morning, I had decided to fix the squeaky sound. But I broke my jack. So Uncle Marc and Dad told me to go buy a new one. And I did, but the one I bought didn't fit under the car!! OH NOES!
I was slightly upset. Then I was annoyed. Am I a Barton or am I a Barton?? Do things like this get to stop me? Of course not.
No is not an answer I like. So I used the bent jack to jack up the car enough to get the big one under and (hopefully) fix the squeaky sound. And Uncle Marc ended up buying the jack off me, so I'll go get a smaller one for next time.
